Woman wins $3.5 million in lawsuit alleging counselor impregnated her at San Jose rehab – NBC Bay Area

A Bay Area woman was awarded $3.5 million in damages by a Santa Clara County civil jury after suing a San Jose rehab facility, alleging she was impregnated by an uncredentialed counselor while seeking treatment for alcohol addiction.

The mother of two, who filed her lawsuit as Jane Doe, said she trusted the rehab facility, Support Systems Homes, would keep her safe and get her sober when she signed up for treatment in 2021.

“I would just be in bed drinking, passed out,” she said. “It was definitely something that I didn’t want to do and keep doing, and I knew I couldn’t just stop on my own.”

As a residential client, she was supposed to be “paired with a credentialed counselor” to guide her through the detox process and set her on the path to long-term recovery, according to the facility’s website.

But that’s not what happened, she said. Instead, she was paired with a counselor who wasn’t certified and was supposed to be working under supervision, according to her lawsuit. He was referred to as John Smith during the trial and had not yet worked enough hours to earn his counseling credential. 

“He was not allowed to do one-on-one counseling under these circumstances,” said Mark Hooshmand, Jane Doe’s attorney. “He was not a licensed or certified counselor. He should never have been alone with her whatsoever.”

Doe said the relationship with her counselor quickly became unprofessional.

“He would make comments like, ‘yeah, I can’t focus right now,’” she said. “He put his hands on my thigh.”

The interactions escalated, she said, with the counselor regularly having sex with her in his office.

“I was crying a lot, and he just leaned in and then started to kiss me,” she said. “When you’re in that moment, it’s hard to explain.”

Though Jane Doe said it’s hard to explain what happened, a facility supervisor acknowledged in a deposition that counselors at the facility are routinely trained to deal with romantic feelings involving patients.

“This is something that we talk about weekly,” the supervisor said in his deposition. “At least once a week, and possibly every morning. Be careful of counter transference. It’s a huge issue in the industry in general.”

According to the National Institutes of Health, transference is a phenomenon where a patient displaces their emotions, often romantic, onto their counselor or therapist. It can also work in reverse and can be dangerous if it’s taken advantage of or mishandled.

A woman who accused a rehab counselor of taking advantage of her shared her story with NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit to warn others. Senior Investigator Candice Nguyen spoke with the woman and examined the case.

In California, counselors are prohibited by law from having a sexual relationship with a patient being treated at a rehab facility. 

Despite that, Doe said the sexual encounters became a regular occurrence while she was at the facility, which led to an unplanned pregnancy and derailed her recovery.

“I did relapse,” she said. “Just from being stressed out and finding out that I was pregnant.”

When her husband found out, he reported it to the facility, according to an incident report obtained by Doe’s attorney, and the counselor was immediately fired.

Doe went on to sue the facility and the counselor in 2023, alleging she was taken advantage of, and that the facility was understaffed and mismanaged.

“Jane Doe was vulnerable, there was an imbalance of power, and there was the fact she’s going through a detox and coming off of alcohol,” Hooshmand said.

On top of assigning her an uncredentialed counselor, the lawsuit alleged the facility failed “to properly supervise” him.

The facility is owned by Robert Norton, whose behavior, according to the lawsuit, “directly interfered with the facility’s operations and management.”

In 2022, the California Department of Health Care Services investigated a complaint that Norton would show up to the rehab program drunk. While investigators did not substantiate the claim, they did cite the facility for allowing “people onsite that act in an unprofessional manner,” after multiple employees told investigators about Norton’s “erratic behavior while at the program.”

“The facility’s responsible because of how badly mismanaged it was and they enabled and allowed this counselor to have this one-on-one contact unsupervised with Jane Doe,” Hooshmand said.

Neither Norton, the counselor, nor their attorneys responded to NBC Bay Area’s requests for comment. In court filings, however, the facility denied causing any damages to Jane Doe.

So did the counselor, who later testified that a supervisor asked him to work as a counselor at the facility, even though he wasn’t yet qualified.

“Of course [I] said yes, but I’m short my hours,” he said in court. “And she told me that she would take care of that.”

In a recorded deposition, the counselor said he was stressed out and overworked.

“From the moment I clocked in, to the moment I clocked out, it was nonstop moving, and counseling, and group sessions and paperwork, and mediating,” he said.

The civil jury found in Jane Doe’s favor and awarded her $3.5 million in damages. The jury held both the facility and the counselor responsible for the harm Jane Doe suffered from their negligence but assigned most of the blame to the facility.

“It felt good to know that they actually understood the whole situation for what it was,” said Doe, adding she wanted to speak out now as a warning to other women enduring similar struggles. “Because it was just hard for me to have to go and be open about it, you know, something that I’m not necessarily proud of. Just knowing that people support you and understand that it’s not my fault.”

Hooshmand said he believes these issues go far beyond Support Systems Homes, and that the entire rehab industry is prone to abuse.

“I think it is very common,” Hooshmand said. “I think it’s widely underreported. I think, unfortunately, there’s not enough oversight and management of the facilities.”

Doe said the experience took a serious toll and led to a split with her husband. She said she is doing much better now, though, one-year sober and working to spend more time with her two children.

“Being present for my kids and them not seeing me under the influence and knowing they are proud of me and my family’s proud of me, it just feels really good,” she said.